Issue

Sensata Technologies Develops a Latched Socket

05/01/2008

ATTLEBORO, MA ??? Hideyuki Takahashi, Japan engineering manager, and Hide Furukawa, U.S. engineering manager at Sensata Technologies have developed a latch system for delicate IC packages. This patent-pending latch approach, with a vertical touch application, distributes the force delivered at the time of socket testing over a large area; therefore, protecting bare die, thin, PoP and stacked, and soft molded ICs. By force distribution using no horizontal movement, scratch marks and warpage on the IC can be avoided.

Gail Flower, editor-in-chief, Advanced Packaging, caught up with Furukawa and the Sensata team during the BiTS Workshop.

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”This is unique in burn-in test sockets,“ says Furukawa. ”And it fits the packaging trends as IC packages become smaller and thinner.“ In the past, mismatching of the latch and the delicate IC may cause undesirable results, such as scratch marks or warpage, during burn-in. Current solutions for these problems are by using lubricated plastic material on the latches, latch surface coating or rocking the latch plate. However, each of these concomitantly introduces other problems, such as glass fiber in plastic latch coating, easy removal of the coating material. With the vertical touch latch system, the latch pushes down on the IC using a completely vertical action, which circumvents pressure scratch marks on the IC surface and distributes the applied force.

”Force distribution test results show that vertical touch distributes the force to a 10-times larger area than other designs.“ This spreading of applied force is necessary as IC chips are thinner, faster, smaller, and often vertically stacked. ”Many of our ideas come from customer needs and concerns to fit new materials or designs.“